That 45man PvP roam I posted the video of yesterday was a great time. I went into it not knowing what to expect, who would show up, or whether we would see any action, and ended up having a blast, despite being one of the first ships to die in the second engagement and having to listen to most of it play out.

About the roam itself: it was well organized, started on time, and the organizers had done their homework in terms of where to go to find action, who and how we should engage, and most importantly, how to keep the whole thing fun while still effective. I think this comes through on the coms somewhat, but it’s worth driving the point home that the whole experience was very enjoyable and fairly ‘noob friendly’ in terms of just showing up and following orders. Would do again.

At a higher level, the roam highlights not only what makes EVE such a great game, but why MMOs are in many ways the superior way to game.

I learned about the roam outside of the game (I want to say off a blog… can’t remember), was able to get myself ready easily (cheap cruiser), let my Corp know about the event and let them know it was open to everyone, and finally had little trouble joining up and pew pew’ing.

The above may sound simple or obvious in the context of EVE, but apply to a more ‘standard’ themepark.

First, you can’t join up if the event is not happening on your server; this is of course a non-issue in EVE.

Second, you can’t join up if you are not in the correct level range; non-issue in EVE.

Third, if you do select a level range, the amount of content you can work with is level-limited. You can’t do an open raid tour if you are not level capped. You can’t do an intro-area quest tour with character outside of that range. You can’t do a ‘frig-cruiser’-style PvP arena bash if the game does not allow lvl 10s to queue up. And if it does, 45 lvl 10s can’t queue up to face 5 lvl 85s no matter how much they would want.

Fourth, even if all of the above lines up for you, what are the odds it also lines up for all of your friends? If you are in a raiding guild, only max-level options work for you. If you are in a leveling guild, max-level content is out. And forget doing anything with friends on different servers, that’s going to cost you $25 or so per trip.

Fifth, let’s assume all of the above does line up; now what? In most ‘MMOs’ you take your group and go bash NPCs (often in an instance), and those NPCs won’t end up telling stories about it or being equally entertained by your event. They just die and respawn. Which is fine, it’s certainly not a negative, but it’s not a positive either. Your event has limited impact, triggers limited waves beyond whoever was directly involved.

Sixth is all the EVE-specific stuff that adds to the fun. We had a spy in our initial fleet, who comically screwed up his spying and put his status update in our chat channel instead of the one used by whoever was trying to set us up. We also encountered n RvB fleet, which is a known in-game mega-Corp/faction that is playing its own little game (literally Red vs Blue PvP in high-sec). EVE-voice was a huge help and worked great. The international aspect of EVE was a factor. I could go on.

Point being, this is a small but significant example of why a real MMO, one that is focused not on providing players content, but on providing players the ability to CREATE content, is superior. And it’s superior not for that one event, or that one bite of content, but because long-term, for months/years, the game (by way of its players) continues to provide this kind of dynamic, impactful content. The kind of stuff you never really ‘burn out’ on.

18 Responses to EVE: Little roam, big impact

The target calling in that fleet could be better. Not trying to rain on your parade or anything, just thought you should know.

I mean, I get calling the devoter on isk value but calling the prophs and mallers first isn’t a great idea when there is lower ehp and higher damage ships in range. It all seemed to work out for you though/

As the FC for the RvB fleet, thanks for coming out and killing us! Was a good time and I do hope to meet you in space again.

On the topic of your post, you make some very good points. Ones that I have always agreed with.

Things like RvB would be so much harder to make work in a sharded world. We work because we target a small niche player group which would be even smaller, possibly to small to work, in sharded environments. If a server did get it working though all the other servers would be left out. No one but those on the server that got it working would experience it.

One of the things I don’t think your really talked enough about is the experiences that are generated in a single server environment like EVE and the community that builds. The chances that I would have been on the same server as you and read this blog are minimal, but because it is one server we get to share the same experiences. In WoW when a guild is the first to beat a new raid that just came out that news rarely makes, well news because every other server is having the same thing happen.

Noob question. What happens if the enemy kill your fc? Can they hang around and give directions from a pod or does someone else step in and take over? It must be a major blow in any case so I assume fcs are a priority target if you can find them.

I’m sorry for being so oblivious but after watching the video and reading the post I still have no clue what the hell happened. I saw ships shooting other ships that’s all. What was the purpose of the battles? Did you go for some loot, grabbed territory or defeated an enemy who threatened you some way? What was it all about?